Kathmandu, 19 July, (Asiantribune.com): In an effort to end a five-day long protest of the civil servants, the government has decided to hike basic salary of all gazetted officers by four percent and non-gazetted employees by six percent.
A cabinet meeting held in Singh Durbar on Sunday evening also decided to provide Rs 1,200 a month as dearness allowance to all government employees in Nepal.

There are about 425,000 people on government payroll. One percent increment in the salary of government employees would mean some Rs 640 million to the state coffer.

Talking to media persons after the meeting, Minister for Information and Communication Shankar Pokharel said that the salary of government employees was increased on 1:3.1 ratio. The increment will make the government to incur an additional Rs 12.30 billion.

This is Rs 7.1 billion more than the actual amount allocated for the allowance of government employees in the newly unveiled budget. Each employee enjoys salary worth 14.2 month a year on an average.

Before the hike, the government had been spending Rs 55 billion for salary and Rs 9 billion for pension from its consolidated fund.

Various six trade unions had been staging demonstration in Singh Durbar, the principal government secretariat, demanding at least NRs 5,000 hike in their salary since Tueday, a day after new budget was unveiled in the country.